VLC is one of the best free media players out there, and one of the most popular apps on major platforms. Not too long ago, the Videolan team upgraded VLC to a truly universal app across all of Windows, and today marks one big step forward with the 1.3 update.
Thomas Nigro, one of the developers behind VLC for Windows, has offered a partial list of changes in the new version, as well as some upcoming enhancements; 99% of the code is now shared between Windows Phone and Windows.
- Updated User Interface: The app now has a more polished look, and the icons are more aligned with the new design language in Windows 10. Margins and alignments have been tweaked a bit, and there"s a new design for the video player, but it is still a work in progress according to Thomas.
- Color scheme is now aligned with Android and iOS versions of VLC.
- XAML Responsive Design enhancements: VLC now adapts the interface for your device"s screen size, which eliminates redundant titles like "Now Playing" on small screens and adds more controls for bigger ones.
- Added Back Button for small tablets and phones: Devices such as the Lumia 730/735 can now navigate back more easily.
- Use of Windows 10 APIs via Reflection: This allowed VLC developers to set orange as window background color.
- Refresh button in the Video Library, just like the Music library
- Search has been improved: You can now easily search albums and folders, even if you don"t have properly tagged songs. Simply browse in VLC and « play a folder » just like you would play an album.
- Added Semantic Zoom in the Albums view: This offers custom selection of ordering (by artist, by date, by album).
- LastFM scrobbling should be working now.
- Optimisations of XAML code: This should improve performance significantly, in some cases up to 130% faster.
The 1.3 update is already available in the Windows Phone Store, but will not be available on the Windows Store. However, a v1.3.1 update is coming next week for Windows, Windows RT and Windows Phone; there are a few known issues in v1.3 you should be aware of:
- Embedded or external subtitles don"t work with anything other than MKV videos, and you can"t select a different audio track.
- If you"re using the latest Windows 10 for phones preview build, you"ll likely have stability problems and lots of crashes, which is also true for other apps.
Future versions will include DLNA support and Direct3D 11 video output, paving the way for smooth MKV playback on low end devices via hardware acceleration.
Source: Thomas Nigro